The Consequences of Illicit Trade Safety Security and Sustainability

This volume examines the far-reaching consequences of illicit trade for Safety, Security, and Sustainability. Bringing together studies of human trafficking, migrant smuggling, trafficking in cultural objects, counterfeiting, sanctions evasion, illicit financial flows, wildlife trafficking, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and cybercrime, it asks a simple but fundamental question: what does illicit trade do to societies?Moving beyond approaches that treat illicit trade primarily as a matter of criminal activity, regulatory failure, or illegal markets, the volume develops a shared framework for analysing its consequences across different sectors. Safety draws attention to harms affecting individuals and communities; Security captures threats to public order, institutional authority, organised power, and international governance; and Sustainability highlights longer-term consequences for environments, markets, social cohesion, cultural continuity, public institutions, and future generations. The chapters also show why illicit trade cannot simply be equated with illegal trade, examining the grey zones in which legality, legitimacy, social acceptance, and harm do not always coincide. Combining insights from criminology, political science, international relations, law, economics, and related fields, the volume provides a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to illicit trade while preserving the distinctive characteristics of individual markets and practices. It will be of interest to scholars, students, policymakers, practitioners, and civil-society organisations working on illicit economies, transnational crime, global governance, regulation, and international trade. This is the first volume of the GLITSS trilogy and the culmination of a four-year collaborative endeavour under the COST Action Globalization, Illicit Trade, Security and Sustainability (GLITSS). Bringing together nearly 300 researchers from 48 countries, the network has developed a shared interdisciplinary approach to understanding illicit trade and strengthening dialogue between academic research and policymaking. The two subsequent volumes examine the causes of illicit trade and the responses developed to address it.